Join Institute of Human Origins researchers for a year-long “master class” in human origins research as they illuminate the many facets of how we “became human” and what that means for the future of humans on the planet.
In-person—Auditorium (107), Walton Center for Planetary Health
All lectures begin at 5:00 pm to 6:30 pm
Each monthly lecture will be posted on the third and fourth Thursday of each month
Online—YouTube (youtube.com@ASUInstituteofHumanOrigins)—links in the names below go to the YouTube talk.
All lectures are free and open to the public.
Monthly Lecture Series Schedule
February 8 Exploration and Discovery in the Field and the Lab
Gary Schwartz
The importance of field and laboratory research
Helen Elizabeth Davis
The responsibility and impact of engaging living communities in field research
March 14 Common Origins–Shared Future
Sarah Mathew
How contemporary human populations have adapted to the semi-arid savanna
Sarah Mathew will present two studies based on Turkana pastoralists in Kenya that highlight how our cultural capacities have shaped behavior and psychology in the context of cooperation and conflict.
Denise Su
Savannas and Hominin Evolution
The environmental pressures that early hominins experienced in savannas have long been considered the driving force of many hominin adaptations from bipedalism to brain enlargement to tool use. Denise Su will introduce us to the environments of the earliest hominins and how (or if) they impacted our evolution.
April 11 Meet Your (Nonhuman Primate) Cousins
Ian Gilby
Understanding chimpanzees: the essential role of long-term studies
Ian Gilby will use case studies to demonstrate how long-term studies are critical for understanding the complex social relationships of one of our closest living relatives, and for providing clues about the behavior of early hominins. He will highlight the Jane Goodall Institute’s Gombe Research Archive and database, which are housed at IHO, and curated by his team.
Kevin Langergraber
The challenge of protecting chimpanzee communities
Many of the world's primates face extinction. In this talk, Kevin Langergraber will discuss the threats to wild chimpanzees, and his work in protecting them as co-director of the Ngogo Chimpanzee Project in Kibale National Park, Uganda.
May 2 Our Ancient DNA
Anne Stone
What does ancient DNA tells us about human adaptation?
Tom Morgan
Experimenting with human evolution
Summer break—Online only
June 28 Donald Johanson
A connection to the natural world
(posted on Johanson's birthday)
July A Unique and Cooperative Genus
Joan Silk (posted to YouTube on July 11)
Cooperation: Something old, something new
Kim Hill (posted to YouTube on July 25)
Origins of human uniqueness among the life forms on Earth
August A Creative and Innovative Species
Rob Boyd (posted to YouTube on August 8)
What is cumulative culture?
In-person lectures resume
Sept 12 Human Adaptability to a Changeable Planet
Chris Campisano
Climate change and human evolution
Global and regional climate change is one of the primary culprits used to explain the changes we see in the early hominin fossil and archaeological record. But what exactly controls large-scale climate patterns, and how are they manifested in particular regions of eastern Africa where our ancestors lived? Primarily using data from drill-core records near hominin sites, Chris Campisano will discuss how we extract climatic and environmental signals from the sedimentary record, what changes we see (and what we don’t), and how they may relate to critical intervals in human evolutionary history.
Charles Perreault
Technological evolution: How humans adapt to their environment
Modern humans use technologies to adapt and transform their environments. In this talk, we will discuss how technological adaptations emerge, i.e., cultural evolution, and what the archaeological record tells us about when this capacity for cultural evolution appears.
Kathryn Ranhorn
Stewarding vanishing art and heritage with collaborative paleoanthropology
How do paleoanthropologists safeguard the human evolutionary record? Katie Ranhorn will describe the urgency of collaboratively stewarding precious anthropological resources by combining co-created field research, digital conservation, and replicative art and technology making. Drawing from 16 years of experience working with and for local, Indigenous, and descendant communities in Tanzania, she highlights how cultivating these seeds is necessary to foster a sustainable and humanizing study of human evolution.
October 10 African Rift Valley
Kaye Reed
Answering broader questions in human evolution: The power of collaboration
In the past, paleoanthropologists who explored eastern African sites looking for early hominins did so by assembling a group of researchers who would address different aspects of the major questions proposed at any particular site. After the results were published, other researchers may have compared more than one site to address more over-arching questions, such as chronological changes through time. Today, groups of researchers at different sites are increasingly collaborating to address bigger picture questions by planning to do so before the field research phase. How has this helped the field of paleoanthropology and how is IHO involved in this endeavor?
Ben Trumble
Chronic diseases of aging in an evolutionary context
The US Census Bureau predicts that the number of US adults aged 85 years will double by 2060, accompanied by major increases in chronic diseases of aging. But what was aging like for most of human history? How long did we live? Have humans always been at risk of heart disease or dementia, or is there something about our lifestyle today that increases our risk? Most medical research is conducted in industrialized settings- by working with populations living traditional lifestyles, we can better understand human diversity, and better appreciate what healthy aging was like prior to sedentary urban life.
November 7 The Great Human Diaspora
Curtis Marean
The great human diaspora
New York City Lecture—November 14, 2024
Donald Johanson in Conversation with NYT Science Writer and Author Carl Zimmer
December 5, 2024 - Walton Center for Planetary Health (107)
Standing on the Shoulders of Lucy: New Discoveries Usher IHO's Exciting Future
Yohannes Haile-Selassie
Lucy, the iconic 3.2-million-year-old partial skeleton of Australopithecus afarensis, and one of our earliest human ancestors, has long been central to our understanding of the evolutionary lineage leading to all hominin species, including our own species Homo sapiens. However, the research sparked by her discovery has uncovered additional ancestral species, some of which are twice as old as Lucy, while others lived alongside her. What are these other contemporaneous species, and how do they affect our understanding of Lucy's place in human evolution? This talk explores these questions.